The Great Twenty-Eight

Elvis may have been the King, but without Chuck Berry, the sounds of the Beatles, the Stones, Bob Dylan, and the Beach Boys would all have taken very different paths. Adapting Louis Jordan’s jump blues for electrified instruments, Berry created the definitive architecture for the rock and roll band, and shifted the spotlight to the guitar. Most significant was Berry’s writing, which placed country-style storytelling in a youth-oriented context that perfectly captured the lives, thoughts, and dreams of baby-boomer teens. The Great Twenty-Eight has all the essential hits, from “Johnny B Goode” to the slyly subversive “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” to “The Promised Land” — in a better world, our true national anthem.